Kitabı oku: «All About Us», sayfa 3

Chapter Five

After another large glass of wine, and a lot more staring blankly at my message to Alice, I discover – to my genuine surprise – that the bottle is now four fingers off empty.

Bollocks. That’ll be another row tomorrow. Or later tonight, whenever Daphne gets back. It’s coming up to half eleven now, and she still hasn’t texted.

I feel knackered suddenly, but I decide to do the decorations before heading to bed, so as to provide myself with some passive-aggressive armour ahead of our next argument. I wobble to my feet, realising that my warm three-Guinness glow has now been replaced by a harsh, metallic red-wine drunkenness.

I trudge upstairs to the back attic, feeling the draught cut right into my bones as I open the rickety little door. The decorations are all the way at the back, of course, and to get to them, I have to navigate a treacherous obstacle course of cardboard boxes, suitcases and even an old skateboard (mine, not Daphne’s).

I’m millimetres from the tinsel when I accidentally nudge a massive see-through crate full of Daff’s stuff, which promptly smashes to the ground, spilling its contents everywhere.

‘Fuck’s sake …’ I mumble.

I’ve dropped to my knees to start clearing up when I spot something among the debris. An old metal biscuit tin, its lid hanging half open to reveal a selection of random objects: a crumpled script, a torn-up ticket, a faded programme for a play and a bloodstained fake revolver.

And then it hits me. These objects aren’t random at all.

Out of nowhere, a shiver runs through me; a ghost of that same feeling I felt in the pub, talking to that weird old watch-seller. The sense that this is more than just coincidence.

It’s the gun I reach for first. Crazy how Daphne kept this. I never knew she had. I turn it over and over in my hands, feeling its cold plastic grooves, tracing the smudgy red fingerprints on the handle. I can picture her now, handing it to me. I remember it so clearly. The night we met.

The script, the ticket, the programme: they’re all from that same night. The one that popped into my head earlier: the Sardines-in-the-maze night. I pick up the programme. The front cover reads: UNIVERSITY OF YORK DRAMA SOC PRESENTS: THE CAROL REVISITED.

The play was Marek’s extremely cringeworthy – and surprisingly violent – modern-day reworking of A Christmas Carol. I only had a small part, but still, as I turn the programme over, there I am: allocated my own blurry black-and-white cast photo. I’m gurning toothily at the camera in what appears to be an impression of Wallace from Wallace & Gromit.

I stare down at the picture, and suddenly I cannot believe that this grinning nineteen-year-old kid and I are actually the same person. It’s like looking at a photo of a stranger; I feel no connection at all. What is left of him now?

Obviously it could have been the snakebites and the sambucas, but that night in the maze – a week after this photo was taken – I remember feeling some strange, almost spiritual certainty that everything would turn out all right for me. That I was headed in a decent direction, that my dreams were achievable and the future was a blank canvas I was about to decorate beautifully.

And then – yeah. Look what happened. I took that canvas and filled it with mistakes and failures and wrong turnings. Bad decisions and lies and terrible things I can never, ever take back.

If there’s ever a Ben Hazeley Wikipedia page – and unless someone who shares my name does something worthwhile with his life, there won’t be, but just suppose there is – I can picture now exactly how it will look. Where other Wikipedia pages have headings like ‘Career’ or ‘Legacy’ or ‘Filmography’, mine will just say: ‘Fuck-Ups’. It will be a long, detailed, heavily bullet-pointed list that will begin with the subheading, ‘1996: Dad Buggers Off’ and end – next week – with ‘2020: Cheats On Wife’.

My head is getting heavier by the second, and I know I should crack on with the decorations, but for some reason I can’t tear myself away from the items in this tin. It suddenly makes me angry that Daphne’s kept all this stuff. I picture her sneaking up here from time to time, opening the lid and poring over these objects: physical reminders that she would have been better off without me.

Because that’s it, isn’t it? If your life is just a series of mistakes and screw-ups, then surely it would be best if you weren’t around?

There’s no photo of Daphne in the programme – she was drafted in at the last minute, after someone dropped out – but I can still see her exactly as she was at eighteen: this happy, funny, exuberant girl who gave everyone, friends and strangers alike, the full wattage of her amazing smile, as if she genuinely didn’t realise its power.

And then I stepped in. Chipped away at her over the years, to turn her into the tired, angry, miserable woman in the hallway earlier. Surely her teenage self would be just as disappointed as mine at how things turned out? She must have imagined that by thirty-three she’d have a successful, supportive, normal husband. And kids. I know she wants kids, even though we haven’t broached the subject once this year, despite lots of our mates starting to have them.

A weird memory hits me – not even mine, but something Mum told me when I was a teenager. I’d been eagerly pestering her for happy stories about me and Dad – positive that he’d soon be back in my life – and she’d finally caved and told me about how, when I was eight, I’d wandered in on him watching that Monty Python film, The Meaning of Life. Hearing the phrase, I’d repeated it, parrot-fashion: ‘Dad, what is the meaning of life?’ And he’d laughed and then replied: ‘I suppose it’s to increase the sum of human happiness.’

I loved that answer when I was fourteen, but now it strikes me as the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard. Because all I’ve done since then is subtract, subtract, subtract.

I squeeze the bridge of my nose, and my vision blurs at the edges. I look at my watch to see that it’s one minute to midnight. One minute to Christmas Day.

And then I remember that the watch is bust. Still, that’s probably not far off the real time. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day …

I pick up the programme again, and the fake gun, and hold them both steadily in the palm of my hand.

I’ve no idea how long I sit there staring at them before I fall asleep.

Chapter Six

Traditionally, I find that my hangovers wake up a few seconds after I do.

After a big night of drinking, I tend to get this lovely calm-before-the-storm moment as soon as I regain consciousness, where there’s no pain yet, no regret, no violent urge to vomit. And then as soon as I open my eyes or move my head, all hell breaks loose.

I’m lying perfectly still with my eyes shut, enjoying this period of prelapsarian bliss as I try to fill in the gaps from last night. There are plenty of them. I remember the biscuit tin and the fog of self-pity, but I can’t remember Daff coming home. I can’t remember doing the tree. I can’t even remember coming down from the attic.

Oh please God, don’t let me have slept in the attic.

I experiment with turning my head very gently to the side. There’s no blinding migraine or sudden desire to be sick, which is encouraging. I also seem to be lying on a comfortable pillow and mattress, which bodes well for the please-God-don’t-let-me-have-slept-in-the-attic situation.

I decide to risk it and open my eyes. But it’s not a headache that hits me – it’s cold, hard terror.

I scramble upright, suddenly wide wide WIDE awake, my heart head-butting my ribcage.

Where the HELL am I?

It’s like my brain is still a few seconds behind my eyes, struggling to process the information it’s receiving. The bogey-green curtains; the scratchy Brillo-pad carpet; the poky brown cupboard that hides a grubby little sink and mirror within it.

I hear a low, slightly manic moan from somewhere, and then realise it’s coming from my mouth.

This is … this is uni. This is my bedroom in the first year at uni.

Have I gone mad? Is this what going mad feels like?

Or maybe … maybe this is some kind of elaborate – really elaborate – prank. I suddenly remember an awful interactive theatre experience that Harv dragged me along to once, where the audience ended up as part of the show. We were led into the middle of this extravagant stage and forced to start shaping the plot by ad-libbing with the actors. Maybe this is something similar. If so, then whoever designed the set deserves every award going. It’s literally exactly as I remember it.

I feel my head start to pound, the hangover kicking in now, but then I notice the door handle is rattling frantically and the thumping is actually coming from outside the room.

‘Ben? You in there? Ben!’

The handle jiggles again, but it seems the door is locked.

‘Benjaminnnnnnnn?’ It’s Harv’s voice. Thank God for that.

I stumble to my feet, my heart still thundering, and notice that I’m dressed in a pair of jeans I don’t recognise and my old Wu-Tang Clan hoodie. I thought I’d lost this thing years ago.

I open the door and immediately have to fight the urge to start laughing.

It’s Harv, but it also … isn’t.

It’s like Harv has been gently inflated, or suffered some traumatic allergic reaction. His sharpened cheekbones and laughter lines are all gone, and his face is younger, rounder, doughier. I notice a solid pouch of belly hanging stoutly over his belt buckle. He has a can of lager in one hand and what appears to be a peanut butter and cheese toastie in the other.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he says.

‘I … have no idea,’ I stammer, quite truthfully.

‘Do you know what time it is?’

Instinctively, I glance down at my wrist. My watch says one minute to twelve. The watch I’m still wearing. I’ve woken up in completely different clothes, in a completely different place, and yet this watch is somehow still fixed around my wrist. My brain is poking fruitlessly at this fact when I realise Harv is snapping his fingers in front of my face.

‘Hello? Hellooooo?’

He looks at me strangely, and then takes a large bite of his toastie. ‘It’s after six, man, you’d better get a shift on,’ he says, stickily. ‘Marek just called me. He’s going mental. You weren’t answering your mobile. They’re all already at the Drama Barn.’

I shut my eyes for a second, hoping that when I reopen them I’ll be back in the attic, nursing the mother of all hangovers, with Daphne glowering down at me.

But no. Inflatable Harv is still right there, swigging his lager and staring at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you stoned or something?’ he says. ‘Or are you just being a twat?’

‘No, I’m …’ I have no clue what I am. I feel like I’m in some sort of highly advanced virtual-reality video game.

A door opens behind Harv and a small blonde girl emerges, smiling at us. Fuck. It’s Geordie Claire. She lived opposite me in halls. I haven’t seen her since … well, since uni. She waves two little red tickets at me. ‘Good luck, Ben! Me and Stu will be front row.’

I squint at the tickets. They say: DRAMA SOC PRESENTS: THE CAROL REVISITED.

Suddenly I know where I am. And, more importantly, when I am. I have to grab the door frame to steady myself.

‘Shit, Ben, are you OK?’ Claire asks, rushing towards me.

Harv laughs and slips an arm round my shoulder. ‘Must be first-night nerves. Come on, man, we’ll have a quick drink and then I’ll walk you down there.’

Claire looks slightly concerned, but just nods goodbye and heads out.

Harv leads me through to our corridor’s shared kitchen, and the milky-cheesy-rotten-fruit stench that hits me is almost as strong as the déjà vu. I am now one hundred per cent certain that this is not a dream. Only reality could smell this bad.

I slump down into a plastic chair and take a few deep breaths (through my mouth, obviously). Harv shakes his head as he watches me gulping desperately for air.

‘Mate, will you chill out,’ he laughs. ‘You’ll be fine. It’s not like you’re the main part. What’ve you got, like, three lines?’

I’m barely listening to him. There’s a Nuts magazine calendar hanging over the pasta-sauce-spattered microwave. Just above Michelle Marsh’s partially exposed breasts is the confirmation I’m looking for, the confirmation I’ve been dreading:

DECEMBER 2005.

I’ve come back fifteen years.

Harv plonks a can of lager on the table in front of me. He’s now talking into a little electric-blue flip phone. God, I remember that phone. He thought it made him look like someone out of The Wire. ‘Yo, Marek,’ he says. ‘It’s all right, relax, I’ve found him … Yeah, he’s fine. Just a bit nervous … I know, three lines, that’s what I told him. Anyway, we’re on our way now, so don’t panic … Cool. In a bit.’

He snaps the phone shut with a satisfying click. He used to love doing that. ‘Well, Marek’s officially losing his mind,’ he announces. ‘He thought you’d bottled it. Apparently the girl doing the props has also dropped out last minute. He’s calling everyone he knows to find a replacement.’

I can’t get my head around this. I know I should probably be crying or screaming or checking myself into an asylum, but all my brain seems capable of doing is compiling a list of every time-travel film I’ve ever seen. 12 Monkeys, The Terminator, Timecop: they all involve people being sent back to kill somebody significant. Is that what this is? Does Geordie Claire turn out to be the next Hitler or something? She is vegetarian.

But then there’s also Bill & Ted, Back to the Future, Groundhog Day …

‘Harv …’ I stare up at him blankly. ‘What happens in Groundhog Day? I mean, like, why does he go back in time?’

If Harv finds this question at all random, he doesn’t show it. He simply taps his can of lager against his teeth, thoughtfully. ‘Er … isn’t he, like, a weatherman, who’s sort of pissed off with everything? And so he keeps reliving the same day over and over until eventually he … shags Andie MacDowell? Isn’t that basically it?’

I nod dumbly.

He grins at me. ‘Hey, d’you reckon we can name every Bill Murray film from Groundhog Day on?’ He glances up at the clock. ‘Nah, best not, actually. Marek would murder me.’

He downs his beer and pulls me up by the shoulder. ‘Come on, man, let’s go.’

Chapter Seven

As we tear across campus, I am hit by wave after wave of déjà vu.

Our poky little college bar, the run-down Kwiksave, the cocky squads of ducks that waddle up from the lake to shit on the walkways; all of them appear as we sprint past, as if daring me to doubt how real this is.

Because it clearly is. Real.

But still, as I chase Harv across the rickety red bridge by the English block, I feel almost like I’m watching this whole thing from above. Like it’s happening to someone else. Maybe that’s the best way to deal with it: forget the whys and the hows and the what-the-actual-fucks and just go with it until it’s over.

We finally stop running when we reach the Drama Barn – or the Drama Closet, as we rechristened it: a tiny fifty-seater venue right in the middle of campus. There’s already a line of people outside queuing to get in.

‘Fucking hell,’ Harv pants, mopping his forehead with his sleeve. ‘I need to start doing more exercise.’ He nods at the entrance. ‘Well, go on then, dickhead. Break a leg and all that. I’ll see you afterwards.’

Still on autopilot, I walk past the queue and approach the bloke sitting by the main door, taking tickets. I vaguely remember him; a second-year, I think, fully kitted out in the unofficial Drama Soc uniform of black turtleneck, black jeans, black trainers.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I tell him. ‘Can I, erm … come in? I’m in the play.’

He grunts but doesn’t look up from his phone. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Ben Hazeley.’

He starts scanning a list on the table in front of him. ‘Any relation to Patrick Hazeley?’

And even in my stupefied state, I still feel it. The sense that I’ve been instantly reduced to a little kid; that I exist only as a footnote in the life of a man I barely know.

‘Yeah, he’s my dad.’

The second-year looks up at me; I’m suddenly interesting enough to warrant his full attention. Interesting by birth. Interesting by proxy. ‘Shit, is he really your old man?’ he says. ‘I love his stuff. Seriously, Earth Weight was the first play I ever saw. Fucking … brutal. Incredible writing.’

‘Yeah,’ I say.

He moves aside to let me through. ‘Good luck anyway, mate. See you after, probably.’

I slink into the venue, which is still dark and empty at this point. I remember that the dressing room is right at the back, but I feel like I need a few minutes alone before I have to do any more actual interacting, so I duck into the little toilet behind the lighting rig.

I should really have been expecting it, but seeing my reflection in the mirror makes me genuinely jump. If Harv’s been inflated, then I’ve been whittled down. It’s the face I saw in the programme last night. I push my bony nineteen-year-old cheeks right up to the glass to find soft patches of nearly-stubble in place of wrinkles, and no sign yet of a widow’s peak retreat in my thick dark brown hairline.

I splash my face with cold water and as soon as I come out of the toilet, I hear a voice behind me.

‘Marek is going to KILL you!’

Alice is right there, smirking up at me. She looks … To be honest, she looks almost exactly the same as when I saw her at the wedding. Which is to say that she looks a bit like a blonde Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, except she’s now sporting more of an Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction haircut. She looks good.

‘Come on, the audience will be in any minute.’ She beckons me through to the dressing room, which is stuffed with bodies: people wriggling into shiny suit jackets, having their faces frantically powdered, yelling out lines at random across the uproar. I spot Marek – who hasn’t changed much either; same beard, glasses, wild hair – in the corner, muttering into his phone. He sees me, mimes throttling someone (presumably me) but doesn’t break off the call.

‘He’s found somebody to do the props, I think,’ Alice tells me. ‘Some mate of Jamila’s. He’s just speaking to her now.’

I nod as I feel the beginnings of a thin film of sweat on my brow. Because I suddenly know where all this is heading. I know that I’ll see her in – what will it be – ten minutes? And then it’ll be much, much harder to pretend this is all happening to someone else.

‘Audience is coming in!’ somebody hisses, and suddenly the noise level in the room sinks to a nervy murmur.

The next few minutes are a total blur. I’m helped into my costume – a cheap black Reservoir Dogs-type suit – and then slapped about gently by a girl with a powder brush.

The play has started by now – I can hear Marek on stage, hamming it up – and its finer details begin to tumble back into place in my mind.

The Carol Revisited. ‘Dickens meets Tarantino’ is how Marek pitched it to us at the first rehearsal. Six months from now, he will be openly dismissing it as ‘crude and underdeveloped’, but at the moment, I can hear him giving it his absolute all as he bellows, ‘Humbug, motherfucker!’ at the presumably bewildered audience.

Marek was – is – Drama Soc chairman, and therefore also was – is – a massive show-off. Not content with writing and directing, he’s also playing the main part: Vinny Scrooge (seriously), a meth dealer who is near-fatally shot by a hitman and then guided through his past experiences by a mysterious ghost.

I’m playing the hitman, I remember that much. And the ghost—

‘Ben, dude, they want us backstage.’

I turn around to see a stark-naked man standing in front of me, a stoner’s grin smeared across his face.

Bloody hell. Clem Matthews. Third-year, I think. Not what you’d call a natural actor, but apparently the only student on campus willing to get his knob out in public. I suddenly wonder what he’s doing nowadays. Porn, presumably.

Quite why Marek insisted on the ghost being fully nude, I can’t remember now. Something to do with spiritual realism and shocking the ‘boring old farts’ in the drama department, I think.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ Clem says.

The costume girl stops me. ‘Hang on, are you keeping that watch on? You weren’t wearing it in rehearsals.’

I stare down at my watch, still stuck firmly at a minute to twelve. I forgot I had it on. Why do I have it on? How the hell is it still here when everything else has disappeared?

‘It’s fine,’ Clem breezes. ‘Hitmen obviously wear watches. They don’t want to be late for their murders, do they?’

He grabs my arm, and I follow his bare arse cheeks out behind the wobbly set. We both stand in silence, waiting to go on.

‘How you feeling?’ he whispers. ‘Nervous?’

I suddenly recall how awkward this always was in rehearsals, having to make small talk as I tried very hard to ignore Clem’s dangling penis.

‘Bit nervous, yeah,’ I whisper.

He shrugs. ‘You’ve only got, like, three lines. You’ll nail it.’

Three lines. Why is everyone so obsessed with this three-lines thing? Then it hits me: I have no idea what these three lines are. It’s been fifteen years since I looked at this script. I’m about to walk out on stage with no clue what to say when I get there.

I’ve just decided to make a run for it when I feel a light tap on my shoulder.

‘Hey, are you Ben? This is yours, right?’

Daphne smiles brightly as she holds out a plastic fake revolver.